Off Message (12/09/14)
The Times carried an amusing sketch of Lord John Prescott's adventures in sunny Rutherglen the other day which didn't seem to go down too well with the locals.
I loved the impression given by the piece which is while old Two Jags was definitely 'on the bus' he nevertheless managed to stray way off message, and not for the first time of course.
So I imagine the Yes campaign will be thinking 'Haste Ye Back' rather than "Feck Off''.
John Prescott blasts Cameron for ‘ripping families apart’
John Prescott campaigns in Rutherglen Mark Runnacles/Getty Images
By Mike Wade - The Times
John Prescott has punched a hole in Better Together’s united front to save the Union by demonising the Conservatives and arguing that David Cameron should not have come to Scotland to argue the case for a “no” in next week’s referendum.
Addressing a street meeting in Rutherglen, South Lanarkshire, Mr Prescott began his speech by holding up a copy of a newspaper headlined: “Cameron: don’t rip apart our UK family”. Mr Prescott told supporters that Conservatives has been “ripping apart families for generations.”
Asked whether the prime minister should have stayed away from Scotland, Mr Prescott said: “Yes. When I see The Daily Mail say ‘tearing our family apart’, the man, his party has been doing that all his bloody life. It’s what they do.”
Referring to Downing Street’s recent difficulties in raising a saltire above the prime minister’s house, he went on: “They have come up with an idea about fast legislation, whether it is right or not, and Gordon Brown has articulated that.
“The three parties have agreed and with Cameron up here, he wants to show he is for devolution – Christ he can’t even get the flag up. He want to say he’s for devolution, but I have to say, ‘That’s not been your history’. I tell you what, if he came into my constituency, into the northern areas, and said if I don’t win this vote I am going to go, it would be bloody powerful information.”
So often a talisman for Labour at by-election campaigns north of the border, Mr Prescott was unloaded from his party’s battlebus, apparently unaware that Scotland’s tectonic plates are shifting.
For much of the time, the speech he made outside a bank on Main Street was drowned out by rival “yes” and “no”” supporters, chanting like football fans. All part of the rough and tumble of the stump, said Mr Prescott, but perhaps the mood infected him.
He made a poor joke about England and Scotland uniting in football to defeat Germany, which he attempted to clarify later, though at one point he appeared to confuse Scotland with Germany.
He said: “I came in a bus, same as the German football team. I watched the German match, the Scots did very well, but they don’t win; England doesn’t win. With Better Together as a campaign slogan perhaps it would be better if we did. There is a serious question there isn’t there? About whether England, Wales and Germany should be treated as separate teams in Europe but I’m not making that proposal, I’m just saying I’m on the bus.”
To be clear, he stressed he was against a UK football team. “The national feeling is they wouldn’t want to,” he said. “I still want to shout for England even though we lose every bloody time.”
When voices were heard above the din, the most succinct lines came from hecklers: he was called “Duke of Cumberland”, “traitor” and, more tellingly perhaps, reminded of his proper title by one grey-haired campaigner, who simply yelled out: “Baron Prescott of Kingston upon Hull in the County of East Yorkshire.”
It’s too much of a mouthful for many in Rutherglen.
